218 - The Truth About Cannabis

Program Notes §

Guest speaker: Claudia Little, BSN, MPH

Below you will find the list of links to Web sites that Claudia Little refers to in her presentation about the safety, benefits, and importance of the cannabis plant.

Marijuana – Why it Works
Supporting Studies and Articles

Growing Acknowledgments from Health Organizations regarding the Medical Benefits of Cannabis

Health Organization Endorsements
AMA Calls for Scientific Review of Marijuana’s Prohibitive Status

How Cannabis Works
The Brain’s Own Marijuana (Get link to complete article from Scientific American at this link)

Cannabis and the Brain

Marijuana Compounds Possess Synergistic Anti-Cancer Effects, Study Says

Marijuana Extracts Relieve Intractable Cancer Pain Better than THC, Study Says

Books on Specific Conditions
Aging, Arthritis, Cancer, Chronic Pain, Gastrointestinal Disorders, HIV/AIDS,
Movement Disorders, Multiple Sclerosis (Americans for Safe Access)

Comprehensive Reviews of Recent Research
Emerging Clinical Applications for Cannabis and Cannabinoids

Some of the Most Significant Research Results of 2009

‘Gold Standard’ Studies show that Inhaled marijuana Is Medically Safe and Effective
(CA Center for Medical Cannabis Research)

Feds’ Top Pot Researcher Says Marijuana Should be Legal
(UCLA’s Taskin/Lung Cancer Risk)

If Pot Prevented Cancer You Would Have Heard About It, Right?
(Boston University re: Head/Neck CA)

Smoke Has Contrasting Effects On Lung Function Compared to Tobacco, Study Says

Moderate Marijuana Use Not Associated with Altered Cognitive Shills, Study Says

Opposite Relationships Between Cannabis Use and Neurocognitive functioning
in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia

Review: Supposed Marijuana and Schizophrenia Link “Overstated”

Weeding Through the Hype: Interpreting the Latest Warnings About Pot and Schizophrenia

THC Shown to Help Patients with Schizophrenia

Safety of Cannabis

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

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Psychedelic Space. This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And before we get into today’s program, I would first like to thank some of our fellow salonners who made donations to help pay for the expenses associated with these podcasts,

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and you’ll no doubt recognize some of them as having been donors in the past as well.

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And this week, I would like to thank Colin F., Ian B., Nexus 112, and Murray G. for

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their ongoing support of the salon. And by the way, Ian, I think you should consider yourself

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donated up for life. That was very generous. Thank you so much, all of you. Now, I want to

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get right into today’s program because I think that it is one that you will find quite helpful as we gradually, ever so slowly, push back the oppressive policies of cannabis prohibition around the world.

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The talk we’re about to hear was just given a few days ago, I think on March 5th, 2010 to be exact.

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And so this information is about as up to date as we can get in a podcast, today being the 9th, by the way.

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It’s a talk that was given at the Ashland Alternative Health Clinic in Ashland, Oregon.

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And the clinic is directed by Alex Rogers

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and is a place where patients are guided through the official process

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of acquiring an Oregon medical marijuana card.

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As you will hear in a moment, our speaker, Claudia Little, is a registered nurse who

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also has an advanced degree in public health.

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Additionally, Claudia is a member of the Medical Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access,

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which is the nation’s largest organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists,

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and concerned citizens who are jointly promoting safe and

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legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and for research.

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And it is one of several large organizations in the U.S. that are all working toward bringing

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an end to cannabis prohibition.

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Now, what we are about to hear is so information-packed that it could easily be the introductory lecture for a semester-long course on cannabis and particularly its use as a medicine.

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In the next 60 minutes or so, even if you are very well-versed about this subject, I think that you’re going to find some things that you had missed in your own research.

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missed in your own research.

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And should you happen to be in the unenviable position of living with your parents or a significant other who disapprove of your cannabis use, my suggestion is to encourage your antagonist

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to listen to this podcast, and then you can have an intelligent discussion with them.

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Because until and unless the public at large knows the truth about cannabis, we’re going to continue having a difficult time getting our side of the story across.

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Now, before I play this talk, I also want to provide you with a little better picture of our speaker, Claudia Little.

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As you will hear in a moment, Claudia is extremely knowledgeable about this subject.

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In my opinion, her information is the best that’s available anywhere today.

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However, I feel that I should also explain my personal relationship with Claudia and

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her husband, Ron, who you’ll hear at the end of this talk when he talks about the workings

00:03:38 ► §

of various kinds of vaporizers.

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You see, my wife and Claudia were roommates in nursing school.

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They served as nurses in the U.S. Navy together and have been close friends ever since.

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And there was a period several years ago when my wife and I found ourselves, how shall I say it, without a place of our own to live.

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And for about eight months, Ron and Claudia shared their home with us, providing us a chance to regroup

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and get back into the fray once again. In short, Claudia and Ron are among our closest

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friends, more like family actually. So without any further ado, now let’s join Claudia Little

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as she shares some very important information about what may be the single most important

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plant that we know of.

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Without further ado, Claudia Little, give it up.

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Well, hi. I haven’t done one of these classes before, so you’re my guinea pigs here. Everything

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I talk about will be, you’ll be able to access

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with links to all kinds of studies

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so if anything especially piques your interest

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you’ll find it listed here

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and you can really delve into it a lot deeper

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so that if you want

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I’ll send each of you a copy to these links

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so anyway

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I’m 64, I’m a grandma, and I’m an outspoken medical

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marijuana activist. So what happens to make somebody like me really get up and speak before

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city council people and to the media, which I used to do in San Diego before we moved up here a few years ago.

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It’s almost always some kind of personal incident that causes somebody to really get passionate.

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And so I’m just going to go through a little of my personal history to kind of tell you where I’m coming from on that.

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I went to college in the 60s.

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So, you know, a lot of people were, you know, loved children then, and we had flowers in our hair and all that. Although I didn’t. I was really a straight, you know, laced

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kind of person. And I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 67. And then I went right

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into the Navy Nurse Corps as an officer. So, you know, I i tried smoking cannabis in college i’d had a joint and

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didn’t really have any feeling from it you know i think a lot of us had that experience the first

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time we tried cannabis and as an officer of course that wasn’t part of my lifestyle so

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you know just kind of passed me by but i you know vietnam war i i mean i joined the nurse corps and

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it was like i i wasn’t i wasn’t for the war, but they

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were helping me get through school. So anyway, after I got out of the nurse corps, I worked for

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a while and got a master’s of public health from Tulane University, and decided after that, that I

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really wanted to be a nurse practitioner. So I did get a certification as a nurse practitioner from UC

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San Francisco and worked then for a while, got married, had a child, got divorced,

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raised my kid till he was getting in close to high school. And I met Ron Little right over here,

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my wonderful husband. And that was in the mid-90s.

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And about that time, I was still working,

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and I was coming home from a long drive,

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and I got a call from my kid’s high school.

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And he had just been arrested on campus with a joint.

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And so he was going to get suspended,

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and he wasn’t going to be able to go back to school

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unless he went to a couple of drug rehab programs.

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He was brand new in the school because we just moved to the area.

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He was a freshman, and it was the most horrible kind of introduction to his new group of friends.

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And then going to the cannabis or the marijuana rehab program was just quite an eye-opener for my husband and I.

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We sat through these things with our son, you know,

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trying to look very stoic about, you know, being, you know,

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you can’t be doing this kind of thing,

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knowing that what they were telling our son was completely erroneous,

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and it really pissed us off.

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So, you know, by this time, you know, we had actually, we smoked cannabis now and been at

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home, but very seldom. I mean, Ron and I had decided to get married before we’d even discussed

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whether we smoked cannabis. So that’s how infrequent it was. But that really galvanized

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both of us to learn more about marijuana

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because we knew what they were telling our kid was wrong.

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And so we actually signed up to go to a normal conference in San Francisco.

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And this was in the early 2000s, you know, around 2002 or so.

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At that point, we were still so under the radar.

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Our friends didn’t know we ever smoked at all,

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and we just kind of crept off to San Francisco, not telling anyone where we were.

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And we got to this conference, and if you haven’t ever gone to a national conference

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of one of the advocacy groups, I’d really, really recommend that you do.

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It totally changed us.

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We went there, and we saw people getting up, famous people.

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Rick Steves, you know, the travel guy, he’s on the board of Normal. He got up and gave an

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impassioned talk about how cannabis should be legalized for all purposes.

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Oh, he is so fabulous. Yeah, he is a great guy. And, you know, lots of lectures on the medical uses

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and a lot of people getting up and talking about all aspects.

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So what really got me interested, though,

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was this talk by some Americans for Safe Access people.

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They had just started the Americans for Safe Access chapter in San Francisco.

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And we were so impressed with what

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they were doing that when we came back to San Diego, we joined with a couple of other people

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that we’ve met from the area, and we actually started an Americans for Safe Access chapter.

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And right away, that really propelled us into the limelight. And so I haven’t been sorry at all.

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And I’m really, really just so pleased to be able to know as much as I do about cannabis

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and actually now to tell you a little bit about it too.

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I’m just going to, I think that, like I said, the pivotal thing for me was keeping my son safe.

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And in my case, it was keeping him safe from arrest.

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And I think that’s the biggest thing that we all need to do.

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And, you know, the cannabis prohibition, that is the main problem with it.

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Not cannabis, the plant, but the prohibition of cannabis.

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but the prohibition of cannabis.

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About 4,000 years ago, cannabis was mentioned in the Chinese pharmacopoeia.

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It said it undoes rheumatism.

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So this is something that’s been known for millennia.

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And as we’ve come forward, and even in our own country in the 1600s,

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it was actually illegal not to grow cannabis.

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You had to grow it. And by 1850,

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there were over 8,000 cannabis plantations, or I guess they’d call it hemp back then,

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hemp plantations in the U.S., and a plantation was 2,000 acres. So it was a huge crop, and our whole economy depended on it. By the time we get into the early 1900s,

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the slaves had been emancipated and the Mexicans are starting to come across into southern states

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and they brought their cannabis with them for medicinal value as well as recreational value.

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And the fact that these black and brown people, the jazz musicians in New Orleans were using it,

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and that culture kind of expanded the use of cannabis.

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And a group of people that our country at the time was very much afraid of.

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And the politicians of the time that wanted to really get rid of the hemp-growing people of our nation

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because, like William Randolph Hearst, wanted to make newspapers out of his forests,

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and the DuPonts wanted to make nylon and rayon instead of having hemp fibers.

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All of this kind of conspired to get rid of hemp in the country.

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to get rid of hemp in the country.

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And so around in the 30s,

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the first Bureau of Federal Narcotics Bureau was formed.

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And actually now it’s morphed into the DEA.

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But they got together with some of these tycoons, the politicians did, and in the back doors,

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they decided they were going to tax marijuana,

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and they were calling it marijuana.

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So the pharmaceutical companies that had cannabis

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in most of their patent medicines at the time,

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and who else?

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The farmers that were growing hemp, they called it hemp.

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So when they were talking about this demon weed

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called marijuana, people didn’t really recognize what they were doing. About two days before the

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Senate or the Congress was going to vote on the Tax Act, the AMA came and realized, hey, this is

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cannabis. We can’t let this happen. And they came to testify in Congress,

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and their testimony was actually misrepresented to Congress. And two days later, it was just too

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late to stop it. The Tax Act was passed. And that essentially made cannabis illegal. That was really

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the only way the federal government could do it, because usually states had to regulate their drugs.

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So the Tax Act made anyone that sold marijuana, they had to pay a huge tax and of course nobody could pay it and so that made them go to jail. It worked. And the hysteria that surrounded

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cannabis back then was really unforgivable and the kinds of prejudice-type statements that were made really couldn’t be made

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today. But, you know, here’s what Harry Anslinger said, the first director of our narcotics bureau.

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He said, there are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics,

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Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This

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marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and all

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others. So that’s the kind of stuff that was fed to the public and it just kept on going and

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cannabis use really kind of died out a bit. But around the 60s when I was in college, it had a resurgence.

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And most of us that are in this age group know that there’s nothing wrong with cannabis, you know.

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Most of us didn’t really get very high from it even, you know, so who cares.

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But anyway, science has been trying to inform politicians for a long time that they’re off base.

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Nixon even commissioned the Schaefer Report in 72.

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And the Schaefer Report reported back to him saying,

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the criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession,

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even in an effort to discourage use.

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It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify

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intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only

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with the greatest reluctance. So Nixon got the report, totally ignored it, went forward with the drug war.

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In 1988, the DEA’s own administrative law judge, and probably a lot of you heard this, he actually told the DEA head,

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marijuana in its natural forms is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.

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And this was based on a lot of science that was accumulated at the time and

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summarized by the law judge to his boss. That was ignored. As late as 1999, the Institutes of

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Medicine on a federal level gave the report saying, and they affirmed that marijuana and

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its constituents possessed numerous therapeutic properties, including the ability to control pain, nausea, anxiety, and to stimulate appetite.

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So you can see that all the scientific information that we’ll be talking about today falls on deaf ears.

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So when any of you hear marijuana has no medicinal benefit,

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after today I hope that you’ll be able to really speak out very vociferously about it

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and maybe send them some of the links that I’m going to share with you.

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Polls have shown that 80% of the population of our country believe that medical cannabis should be legalized,

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and that’s everybody, all the states.

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We have now medical cannabis laws in 14 states and

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there, if you want to know what they are, I can let you

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know, but our advocacy groups

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and our lobbying groups in Washington are constantly

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going and talking with state leaders and federal

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leaders and that’s why we have these

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laws. It’s not because the states just decided, hey, this is a good idea. So that’s one reason

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I’m going to make a big pitch for joining all the different advocacy groups and checking their

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websites routinely, because every week there’s a new action alert. And I was on a conference call

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just this week with

00:17:45 ► §

Americans for Safe Access calling from the Capitol building in between appointments with

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senators. And they have said, you know, we go and talk to them, but we need the constituents

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out there to be making a loud noise to their congresspeople. They need to know that you

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are behind us.

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And on that note, Claudia, we’re starting Progressive Reform Oregon, Pro-Oregon. It’s

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starting right now, and it’s my nonprofit lobby group for drug reform policy. And so it’s an

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Oregon thing, a real concerted effort to be able to lobby Salem in a way that they have not been lobbied

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before yet on these particular issues.

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Wonderful.

00:18:29 ► §

Yeah, that’s really what you need.

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Well, something that’s just, you know, this has been around for a while, but maybe a lot

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of you don’t know, that a lot of organizations, medical and scientific organizations, over

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the last 10 or so years have been calling

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for the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes.

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And here in the U.S., just to name a couple, I mean, this is pages and pages of both in

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our country and in other countries, but here in the U.S., the American Academy of Family

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Physicians has endorsed immediate legal access.

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The American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, and most impressively and most exciting for me is that the American Medical Association, the AMA,

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in November just called for rescheduling of cannabis and endorsing its therapeutic value.

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And this was just in November, and I have to –

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I’m actually on the Medical Advisory Board for Americans for Safe Access,

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and one of my fellow members is a member of the AMA,

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and he’s the one that actually got this resolution passed.

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So you can see that these advocacy groups have a tremendous influence on

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what’s happening in our country, and I’m really, really happy about that.

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This is another thing that you’ll find on your list of links, and this is a beautiful compendium

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of information on recent research. This is all research that’s been done in the last

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10 years on medical cannabis. And you can see just from the diagram here, lots of different

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ways that it’s used. This is the kind of thing that you can print out and take to your doctor,

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especially the ones that don’t think this is all mumbo jumbo.

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I think this is all mumbo-jumbo.

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The organizations here, well, the literature that’s listed in here is all annotated,

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and they can look up the references.

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And if they look at it online, they’re all links that you don’t have to really go anywhere.

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They’re just right there for you. You’re being spoon-fed, so it’s beautiful.

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just right there for you. You’re being spoon-fed, so it’s beautiful.

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The reason that a lot of physicians don’t believe in cannabis as being a therapeutic and don’t want to get involved as well, for one thing, they’re afraid. And I was going to tell you about this

00:20:57 ► §

later, but I’ll tell you right now. On your links, you’ll see that there’s reference to Conant v. Walters,

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which was a court case that came about in 2003,

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and it went as far as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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So in that decision, the doctor’s right to recommend cannabis was upheld.

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The Supreme Court refused to take the case.

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So it’s definitely something that your physicians can do.

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And if they think they are going to get in trouble or whatever, you can just take a copy of that to them,

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and it should allay any kind of fears that they have.

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The science of cannabis is very young.

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We didn’t even know what the active ingredient of THC was until 1964.

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And it was researched and discovered by a lab in Israel from the University of Jerusalem.

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And that lab is still very active today, and they do an awful lot of research on cannabis.

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So in 1964, we knew what the active ingredient was, and we knew

00:22:09 ► §

that it caused some kind of a psychoactive response in our body. So there must be some kind of

00:22:14 ► §

receptor in our body that responded to this external cannabinoid. So the search was on to find those receptors. And it wasn’t until 1988 that the CB1

00:22:28 ► §

receptor was found, which is in the brain. And it’s all throughout the brain and the central

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nervous system. And this little diagram shows a lot of different areas in the brain and what they

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they control. So a lot of the psychoactive and even some of the therapeutic aspects of cannabis

00:22:49 ► §

are controlled from the brainstem. And that CB1 receptor was found, and that is mostly in the

00:22:58 ► §

central nervous system. But we didn’t know until a couple of years later about the CB2 receptor, which is in the immune system.

00:23:07 ► §

So the hunt was on for if we’ve got this receptor that this external cannabinoid works with

00:23:14 ► §

and causes a psychoactive response and other responses too,

00:23:18 ► §

then there must be something our body produces that link up to this,

00:23:21 ► §

or why would we have a receptor?

00:23:23 ► §

But it wasn’t until 1992 that’s

00:23:27 ► §

not very long ago that we found um that that um the our own internal cannabis-like substance

00:23:34 ► §

was found and they called it anandamide and that’s sanskrit for bliss which is really appropriate

00:23:41 ► §

um it was a couple of years after that at uc irvine that a second endocannabinoid was discovered,

00:23:49 ► §

and that has a really long name that people have shortened to 2-AG.

00:23:54 ► §

So we know that we have two internal cannabinoids,

00:23:58 ► §

and it’s suspected that there are at least a couple more,

00:24:01 ► §

but they have not been actually identified yet.

00:24:04 ► §

We know they’re there, but it’ll probably be a few more, but they have not been actually identified yet. We know they’re there,

00:24:06 ► §

but it’ll probably be a few more years until we find those. But people are definitely actively

00:24:11 ► §

looking for these endocannabinoids. There are lots of different cannabinoids in the plant.

00:24:19 ► §

The plant has about 60 cannabinoids. So very simply how it works in our body is that when we have pain

00:24:29 ► §

or nausea or all the other things that cause dysphoria in our bodies, our internal cannabinoids

00:24:38 ► §

are activated and they’re really trying to overcome that. And eventually, you know, most of us do get some relief from our pain or

00:24:45 ► §

our nausea or whatever. That is our endocannabinoid system. So when you take external cannabinoids

00:24:52 ► §

and you smoke or eat or whatever, that augments the system and the effect is amplified.

00:24:58 ► §

So in most cases, people find that if they, you know, let’s just take mood, for instance.

00:25:07 ► §

You know, if you smoke cannabis, your mood is elevated.

00:25:09 ► §

That just amplifies the whole endocannabinoid kind of system that we have.

00:25:16 ► §

In our country, we have a really reductionist attitude toward medicines.

00:25:24 ► §

Most of our, actually maybe not most,

00:25:27 ► §

but a good percentage of our medicines are plant-based. Aspirin for one, digoxin, atropine,

00:25:34 ► §

morphine, vincristine, and taxol for chemotherapeutics. You could go on and on.

00:25:41 ► §

And how we work things in America is that we identify the active ingredient,

00:25:48 ► §

the pharmaceutical companies then synthesize it in a lab, they put it into some kind of pill form

00:25:53 ► §

or injectable, they concentrate it so it’s really strong, and then they patent it and then you get

00:26:00 ► §

it as a prescribed pharmaceutical.

00:26:08 ► §

This is a really different approach than Eastern medicine.

00:26:13 ► §

And a couple of years ago, Ron and I went to Vancouver,

00:26:18 ► §

and Chinatown was really interesting, and they have a couple of pharmacies there. And we were just blown away walking around Vancouver in this pharmacy,

00:26:32 ► §

walking around Vancouver in this pharmacy looking at the jars, big jars of roots and leaves and all kinds of mushrooms and different kinds of things.

00:26:34 ► §

And people were in there buying those things from a doctor’s prescription.

00:26:39 ► §

So those are whole plant medicinals.

00:26:43 ► §

There are far less side effects with whole plant medicinals. There’s a synergy that happens when you use whole plant medicinals. There are far less side effects with whole plant medicinals.

00:26:46 ► §

There’s a synergy that happens when you use whole plant.

00:26:50 ► §

And most people that are using cannabis, a lot of times you’ll hear the argument,

00:26:54 ► §

well, we need it to be FDA approved, and, you know,

00:26:59 ► §

why are they having to smoke it when they can use Marinol?

00:27:03 ► §

In fact, there is actually an initiative circulating signatures right now

00:27:09 ► §

to outlaw our cannabis law here.

00:27:12 ► §

I don’t know if any of you are aware of that,

00:27:14 ► §

but they want to say, okay, well, we recognize the medicinal aspects of Marinol.

00:27:30 ► §

aspects of Marinol. It’s actually a class 3 drug, which is not highly regulated like a class 1 is,

00:27:35 ► §

which is considered the most dangerous. They’ve allowed Marinol to be a class 3 and prescribed by a doctor. Most patients that have tried it don’t really like it because it’s unopposed THC.

00:27:42 ► §

And unopposed THC causes anxiety and paranoia

00:27:46 ► §

and agitation and it’s

00:27:48 ► §

just not very comfortable.

00:27:50 ► §

It doesn’t have cannabinoids either, does it?

00:27:52 ► §

That is a cannabinoid, yes.

00:27:55 ► §

THC is a cannabinoid,

00:27:56 ► §

yes. It’s a psychoactive,

00:27:59 ► §

it’s the psychoactive cannabinoid.

00:28:01 ► §

The plant has a lot of different

00:28:02 ► §

cannabinoids in it, in addition

00:28:04 ► §

to THC. Yeah, good question. Can plant has a lot of different cannabinoids in it in addition to THC.

00:28:06 ► §

Yeah, good question. Can I share a quick story? Sure. I went to Mexico and the reason I initially

00:28:10 ► §

started doing it was breaking the hives and just chemical sensitivity. Yeah. I’d have to go get

00:28:16 ► §

injections of steroids every month and a friend of mine suggested I try marijuana and as I was

00:28:22 ► §

getting the hives, I did and they went away. And kept watching the cycle every time I did I’d try it and so my I worked with my doctor

00:28:30 ► §

for a year and we noticed there was literally no explanation for it other than that so I was going

00:28:35 ► §

to Mexico and she gave me a prescription of Marinol well I went and took it down there and

00:28:41 ► §

I got hives while I was taking Marinol. And fortunately, we were staying with a Hispanic family who had a teenager,

00:28:48 ► §

and my teenage daughter goes, Mom, I can get you some, right?

00:28:51 ► §

So she, the boyfriend goes out and gets me some, right?

00:28:54 ► §

And I went.

00:28:55 ► §

I was broken into hives, and I did the potting, and they were gone overnight.

00:29:00 ► §

And it just, I mean, they’re instant.

00:29:02 ► §

I used to, you know, I’d get them so bad on my face that I can’t see out

00:29:06 ► §

of my eyes. It’s just horrible. But the Marinol clearly does not work the same.

00:29:12 ► §

You’re right. And that is so interesting that you said that because the other cannabinoid that is

00:29:17 ► §

a very active one we know a lot about is cannabidiol. And it works on the immune system.

00:29:23 ► §

And what you had was a histamine reaction

00:29:25 ► §

which is kind of an autoimmune kind of reaction it’s a it’s connect cannabidiol

00:29:32 ► §

yeah they call it cbd and uh and obviously that’s the ingredient that you needed

00:29:39 ► §

autoimmune disease and yeah like i had all my blood work was out of whack on so many

00:29:46 ► §

different things and my blood reports come back completely clean now.

00:29:49 ► §

Yeah.

00:29:50 ► §

Well, CBD is not psychoactive and yet it works with the plant to give all those wonderful

00:29:57 ► §

other kinds of benefits, especially for all the autoimmune diseases.

00:30:01 ► §

And it’s being used very effectively for rheumatoid arthritis

00:30:05 ► §

and Crohn’s disease because it down-regulates inflammation in a beautiful way.

00:30:11 ► §

Yeah.

00:30:12 ► §

So that’s a really great first-hand account of Marinol right there.

00:30:17 ► §

Yeah.

00:30:18 ► §

Besides, when you take Marinol, it’s actually prescribed for nausea and vomiting.

00:30:23 ► §

And if you’re taking it orally, you’re going to throw it up if you’re having a bad case of that.

00:30:27 ► §

It takes a long time to get some response from, too,

00:30:32 ► §

because it’s ingested and absorbed through the GI tract, so it’s not going to work very quickly.

00:30:36 ► §

It’s just psychoactive.

00:30:39 ► §

Exactly.

00:30:40 ► §

Yeah, it does have other medicinal properties, though.

00:30:44 ► §

It’s not just that it’s psychoactive.

00:30:47 ► §

It definitely has medicinal properties as well.

00:30:49 ► §

But unopposed THC without the other cannabinoids in it can cause some of those symptoms I talked about.

00:31:10 ► §

Now, the research has really blossomed, especially the last 10 years. And in 1996, when Prop 215 was passed in California,

00:31:20 ► §

if you Googled cannabis research, you would have gotten about 250 journal articles that were published.

00:31:29 ► §

And in 2008, if you did the same thing,

00:31:33 ► §

you would have gotten over 2,100 journal articles.

00:31:36 ► §

And this isn’t just newspaper articles and sensational articles.

00:31:40 ► §

This isn’t the High Times articles.

00:31:42 ► §

This is scientific journals that are with respected credentials from universities around the world and the U.S.

00:31:52 ► §

It works for all kinds of symptoms, and I’ll just go through a list here.

00:31:58 ► §

Glaucoma, appetite, stimulation, nausea control, pain, all sorts of pain, especially neuropathic pain and inflammation, such as arthritis,

00:32:09 ► §

multiple sclerosis for spasticity, pain management, seizures for epilepsy

00:32:13 ► §

and movement disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, GI symptoms and problems,

00:32:19 ► §

Tourette’s, insomnia, lots of other things.

00:32:22 ► §

They don’t have depression on here.

00:32:24 ► §

I think that’s a really big

00:32:25 ► §

one too that is always left off of lists, but I think all of us know how much help it gives us

00:32:32 ► §

with elevation and mood. And the reason that it works so well in so many places is because we have these CB1 and CB2 receptors all over our bodies.

00:32:46 ► §

It’s in cartilage tissue.

00:32:48 ► §

It’s in the cardiovascular system.

00:32:51 ► §

It’s everywhere.

00:32:52 ► §

So when people say, well, I can’t work for all that stuff.

00:32:56 ► §

Okay, maybe appetite and pain, but that’s about it.

00:32:59 ► §

Well, I’m sorry.

00:33:00 ► §

That’s not the whole story.

00:33:02 ► §

I really had to stop myself from putting all these different studies on the links list,

00:33:09 ► §

but one of the really important ones that I think didn’t make the list was where they’ve bred mice

00:33:18 ► §

that didn’t have the endocannabinoid receptors,

00:33:21 ► §

and those baby mice that are born without a cannabinoid system die.

00:33:26 ► §

You have to have cannabinoids to thrive. You don’t eat and you don’t

00:33:32 ► §

gain weight and the baby mice just completely die off. So that’s why again

00:33:40 ► §

that this works with so many different systems and in so many different disease states.

00:33:46 ► §

One of the most exciting things is that not only is it good for symptom relief,

00:33:54 ► §

but now there’s lots of new research in the last 10 years on its anti-cancer effects

00:34:00 ► §

and its ability to modify disease.

00:34:03 ► §

It’s neuroprotective.

00:34:05 ► §

We know that it can actually help nerves regenerate.

00:34:09 ► §

So in patients with Alzheimer’s,

00:34:11 ► §

a girlfriend of mine used to be so afraid of using cannabis

00:34:15 ► §

because her mom had Alzheimer’s, and it was like,

00:34:17 ► §

oh, I don’t want to do that because I might fry my brain and get even worse.

00:34:21 ► §

Just the opposite.

00:34:23 ► §

Cannabis is a neuroprotectant, and they’ve been able to show

00:34:26 ► §

that it grows baby mice nerve cells in their brains. Let’s see. I’ll get to that in a sec.

00:34:37 ► §

Okay, so we’re talking about the anti-cancer effects. In 2005, one of the most definitive

00:34:47 ► §

studies ever done

00:34:48 ► §

on cannabis came out of

00:34:50 ► §

UC Los Angeles

00:34:52 ► §

done by Donald Tashkin

00:34:54 ► §

who was the darling of the National

00:34:56 ► §

Institutes on Drug Abuse.

00:34:58 ► §

That is the organization that funds

00:35:00 ► §

almost all of the cannabis research

00:35:02 ► §

in the country.

00:35:09 ► §

He gave his findings at a medical meeting.

00:35:17 ► §

And what the study said is that marijuana smoking was not positively associated with cancers of the lung

00:35:20 ► §

or upper aerodigestive tract.

00:35:23 ► §

Even in individuals who were heavy, heavy daily smokers,

00:35:27 ► §

he quoted 22,000 joints in their lives.

00:35:31 ► §

He looked at people who really used a lot of it.

00:35:34 ► §

What they found was that these patients actually had less lung cancer

00:35:38 ► §

than non-smokers of any substance.

00:35:43 ► §

So at the meeting, he had to admit at the meeting

00:35:47 ► §

that it could create a protective effect.

00:35:53 ► §

Well, over the years, that was 2005,

00:35:55 ► §

what I loved was in June,

00:35:58 ► §

Tashkin actually came out with this.

00:36:00 ► §

He said that he began his work 30 years ago.

00:36:04 ► §

When he did, he opposed legalization

00:36:07 ► §

because he thought it would lead to increased use, and that would lead to increased health

00:36:11 ► §

effects. However, now he admits his decades’ worth of scientific research revealed the

00:36:17 ► §

opposite conclusion. And what we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effects.

00:36:27 ► §

Now, these are patients that were smoking it, not vaporizing it.

00:36:32 ► §

So, you know, when you hear, well, smoking is so bad for you, you know, quote that study.

00:36:37 ► §

I’m so fascinated with that study.

00:36:39 ► §

Did they go on to people’s testimony, or did they use NIDA’s farm in Mississippi for the marijuana?

00:36:47 ► §

Yeah, no, they didn’t know where the patients got their marijuana.

00:36:52 ► §

This was looking at 2,000 patients, oh, actually about 2,500 patients, based on their histories.

00:37:01 ► §

And in California, so one could assume that they did use NIDA’s test sample

00:37:05 ► §

that the results might not have been

00:37:09 ► §

the same because of the lower grade of cannabis?

00:37:13 ► §

Yeah, you know, that’s interesting. I don’t

00:37:17 ► §

think that that would have made a difference because

00:37:20 ► §

actually there’s a department of Medical Cannabis Research.

00:37:28 ► §

A lot of people don’t know that for the last 10 years

00:37:30 ► §

there’s been this Department of Medical Cannabis Research on a UC campus in San Diego.

00:37:36 ► §

It was funded after Prop 215 was passed by the state, not the feds.

00:37:43 ► §

The state wanted to know, hey, since we passed this medical cannabis law,

00:37:48 ► §

are people going to be getting sick?

00:37:50 ► §

And they’ve actually come out with about 15 published studies, all very positive.

00:37:56 ► §

And the director of that program recently was asked about using the government-supplied NIDA rolled cigarettes that they give out.

00:38:11 ► §

It’s only grown in one place in Mississippi.

00:38:14 ► §

That’s what they used in their studies.

00:38:16 ► §

And he just thought, well, he liked using it because he felt like it was standardized

00:38:20 ► §

and he knew even though it was maybe not the highest grade cannabis,

00:38:24 ► §

he knew it was one standard grade of cannabis for his studies.

00:38:28 ► §

And actually, the studies came out with pretty good results.

00:38:32 ► §

That’s amazing.

00:38:33 ► §

Do you think if you use high-grade, medical-grade cannabis versus that, like, 3% and stuff,

00:38:38 ► §

where they mix, like, the stems and the seeds?

00:38:39 ► §

Right.

00:38:40 ► §

I know Eldie Musica, she’s one of the recipients.

00:38:42 ► §

Right.

00:38:43 ► §

We’ve seen the tins that it comes in from the government.

00:38:45 ► §

There’s seven government federal medical marijuana patients.

00:38:48 ► §

So I know that eventually the studies will even be more,

00:38:53 ► §

or one could assume that the studies might even be more positive,

00:38:57 ► §

assuming that they have a higher test rate.

00:39:01 ► §

Right. Exactly. Yeah.

00:39:03 ► §

There have been a couple of really huge studies.

00:39:06 ► §

Kaiser did one, and it was published in 1997 of 65,000 patients.

00:39:12 ► §

And they asked about cannabis use and looked at mortality rates,

00:39:16 ► §

and they found no association with the increase in mortality.

00:39:19 ► §

So that was one of the first studies.

00:39:21 ► §

And it was kind of revolutionary that an HMO like Kaiser would do a study like that

00:39:25 ► §

and have so many patients and have such a good result.

00:39:30 ► §

But it did kind of go along with another study that came out in Great Britain on a large population of patients too.

00:39:35 ► §

So nothing’s looking too much like it’s causing death and dying here.

00:39:42 ► §

Now, it just gets even better. I mean, I just love this because this summer, there were a

00:39:48 ► §

couple of really great studies. One that was published in August, and this one was, this

00:39:56 ► §

stuff was, it came out in Cancer Epidemiology, and it was a study that took place in Boston University

00:40:05 ► §

and also University of Minnesota and Louisiana State University

00:40:09 ► §

and they were looking at head and neck squamous cell cancers.

00:40:14 ► §

And this actually confirmed some research that I’d seen quite a few years earlier on rats,

00:40:20 ► §

but this was looking at patients, real patients,

00:40:23 ► §

at the incidence of head and

00:40:26 ► §

neck cancers in heavy smokers of cannabis.

00:40:30 ► §

And they found that cannabis smokers had a 35% reduction in head and neck squamous cell

00:40:37 ► §

cancers than non-smokers of any other substance.

00:40:41 ► §

So doesn’t that kind of go along with what Tashkin showed us, that yeah, maybe there’s

00:40:47 ► §

a protective effect here. And especially as a nurse, I know that head and neck kinds of cancers

00:40:54 ► §

are very common in patients that smoke tobacco and drink alcohol. Those two things go together

00:41:00 ► §

and the incidence of head and neck cancers are extremely high. So if cannabis smoking can give that kind of protective effect,

00:41:07 ► §

that’s a very opposite effect from tobacco.

00:41:15 ► §

There’s a study here that was done by the, this just came out last month,

00:41:20 ► §

Pacific Medical Center, part of the UC system,

00:41:25 ► §

they looked at glioma cells.

00:41:28 ► §

Glioma is one of the most dangerous kinds of brain cancers that you can get.

00:41:34 ► §

It’s very deadly.

00:41:35 ► §

A few years back, researchers in Spain actually injected patients

00:41:41 ► §

that were on their last legs.

00:41:42 ► §

They were just about gone.

00:41:44 ► §

Because you can’t do this on regular patients, but sometimes at the

00:41:48 ► §

very end of life, patients will kind of agree to be guinea pigs.

00:41:51 ► §

They injected glioma cells tumors with THC

00:41:56 ► §

and they found that these tumors

00:42:00 ► §

shrunk and patients had a longer lifespan. They only did this on a few

00:42:04 ► §

patients, but that made some medical journals.

00:42:08 ► §

But this particular research was done in the lab.

00:42:11 ► §

It’s preclinical and so not on patients, but they looked at being able to kill cancer cells

00:42:16 ► §

with a combination of THC and cannabidiol.

00:42:21 ► §

And they found a greater effect in using the combination of the two,

00:42:25 ► §

that synergy that I was talking about.

00:42:30 ► §

There was a New Zealand study.

00:42:32 ► §

This was just this past summer on lung function,

00:42:36 ► §

and they looked at patients that were lung capacity, forced vital capacity,

00:42:42 ► §

total lung capacity, forced vital capacity, total lung capacity, functional residual capacity,

00:42:45 ► §

and they compared it to people that didn’t smoke any kind of tobacco.

00:42:52 ► §

And they found that cannabis smokers had the same kind of lung function outcomes than non-smokers.

00:43:02 ► §

So again, no chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

00:43:07 ► §

or lung compromising with smoked cannabis too.

00:43:17 ► §

The really,

00:43:20 ► §

something that made the actual mainstream news,

00:43:24 ► §

and I call Huffington Post mainstream news these days.

00:43:27 ► §

It’s about the only news I care to look at.

00:43:29 ► §

But anyway, I did hear, as I was driving along,

00:43:33 ► §

I heard it on NPR, too,

00:43:37 ► §

that the research arm of the UC system

00:43:42 ► §

that’s down in San Diego,

00:43:44 ► §

the Center for Medical Cannabis Research,

00:43:47 ► §

just came out with a couple of their final studies because now they’re losing their funding.

00:43:52 ► §

It’s been over 10 years that they’ve been going, and they have a couple of studies to

00:43:56 ► §

wrap up.

00:43:57 ► §

But they’ve used the smoked cannabis, and they reported on these two final studies that looked at neuropathic pain

00:44:07 ► §

and the spasticity of multiple sclerosis. Oh, I know what I was going to say. They’re considered

00:44:13 ► §

gold standard type studies because they’re randomized placebo-controlled type studies.

00:44:19 ► §

And they followed patients for quite a while. And because these are the kind of studies that the FDA always says they have to have,

00:44:28 ► §

that really kind of made the news.

00:44:30 ► §

I mean, this isn’t new information to someone that’s been following the research.

00:44:34 ► §

It’s been out there, and it’s been written up in magazines and published and everything.

00:44:38 ► §

But the fact that a state institution that followed all the rules

00:44:43 ► §

came out with these positive results, was really

00:44:46 ► §

newsworthy.

00:44:47 ► §

And on the conference call that I was on recently, last week with the ACE, the people, they said,

00:44:54 ► §

okay, you know, these people in Colorado that have been following all the rules with

00:45:00 ► §

their dispensaries and doing everything right have been raided by the federal government just last week.

00:45:07 ► §

They were just raids going on,

00:45:09 ► §

even despite our attorney general saying

00:45:11 ► §

that he’s going to honor states’ medical marijuana laws.

00:45:16 ► §

Well, we have a new DEA director.

00:45:20 ► §

Her name is Michelle Leonhart, and she’s a real drug lawyer.

00:45:24 ► §

We’re not happy that she’s our new DEA director. Her name is Michelle Leonhart, and she’s a real drug lawyer. We’re not happy that she’s our

00:45:25 ► §

new DEA director. And these raids happened right after her appointment. So the fact that this has

00:45:33 ► §

just come out, you know, the government can’t argue with this. Okay, NIDA didn’t refund the

00:45:39 ► §

research because NIDA won’t refund anything that is going to come out with a positive outcome.

00:45:47 ► §

The state had to fund this kind of study.

00:45:51 ► §

But the fact that they’re still rating people that are using medical cannabis,

00:45:56 ► §

and in the face of this kind of research, they just said,

00:45:59 ► §

write a letter to your paper and ask them why they didn’t report on this study you know they’re

00:46:06 ► §

so eager to put marijuana studies in that that show negative results let’s let’s let’s ask our

00:46:12 ► §

paper so i got i i wrote a letter i don’t know if it’ll get published but we’ll see it might you

00:46:18 ► §

never know they’ve they’ve they’ve actually published a couple of my letters so they are

00:46:24 ► §

they are and that’s the pressure that we put on is going to make a couple of my letters. They are. They are. And that’s

00:46:25 ► §

the pressure that we put on is going to make a lot of difference.

00:46:29 ► §

So this thing that you’re doing, Alex, is

00:46:31 ► §

very timely.

00:46:35 ► §

On that note, just the

00:46:38 ► §

28th of January, the NIDA

00:46:40 ► §

spokesperson said this, as the National Institute

00:46:43 ► §

on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequence of marijuana use.

00:46:49 ► §

We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.

00:46:55 ► §

That was just a few weeks ago.

00:46:58 ► §

So that’s why we don’t see anything from our government, because they have a policy not to even go there. That’s why

00:47:05 ► §

Donald Tashkin at UCLA was, it was really amazing that his research was able to actually

00:47:14 ► §

get as much publicity as it did, but it was mostly within our little group of people that

00:47:20 ► §

want to liberate cannabis.

00:47:24 ► §

NIDA did fund his research with the expectation

00:47:27 ► §

that he was going to make a positive connection between lung cancer and cannabis smoking.

00:47:34 ► §

Previously, all the research had been too small of projects.

00:47:37 ► §

This was going to be the definitive one to prove that connection.

00:47:41 ► §

And he came up with the contrary result, much to their regret.

00:47:47 ► §

Exactly. Okay, so let’s, you know, I think that the psychological effects of cannabis

00:47:59 ► §

have been so overlooked, and none of the state programs lift depression as something that cannabis can be used for.

00:48:09 ► §

And you’ll hardly ever, you know, people stay away from that.

00:48:12 ► §

So what’s wrong with euphoria?

00:48:13 ► §

That’s what I want to know.

00:48:15 ► §

You know, I think it’s very obvious to me that when I smoke

00:48:19 ► §

or vaporize with cannabis, I feel better already.

00:48:22 ► §

I just have a lifting of mood.

00:48:24 ► §

And with the amount of psychoactive drugs for depression

00:48:29 ► §

that are being pharmaceuticalized in this country,

00:48:32 ► §

cannabis would be a really great alternative.

00:48:34 ► §

And there are so many side effects.

00:48:36 ► §

One of the big ones for men is impotence.

00:48:38 ► §

And with cannabis, it’s just the opposite.

00:48:40 ► §

It really enhances one’s sexual life.

00:48:44 ► §

So I just think that more and more research

00:48:48 ► §

needs to come out about cannabis being good for mood. This was a good one. This is also going to

00:48:57 ► §

be on your links. It’s cannabis in the brain, and it goes into a lot of the science about

00:49:01 ► §

neuroprotection. But the very first paragraphs, paragraphs cited research at the University of Saskatchewan

00:49:09 ► §

that looked at newborn mice, and it says that the university found

00:49:16 ► §

that the administration of cannabinoids in rats stimulated the proliferation

00:49:20 ► §

of nerve cells in the hippocampus region of the brain

00:49:23 ► §

and significantly reduced

00:49:25 ► §

measures of anxiety and depression-like behavior. So, okay, if it’s good for rats, I guess it’s good

00:49:31 ► §

for us too. So when you see things like that, when I see any kind of thing that talks about depression

00:49:38 ► §

being ameliorated in humans, I go right for it. So this came out in November. It was done at the

00:49:48 ► §

University of Oslo, and it looks at the use of cannabis in neurocognitive functioning for

00:49:55 ► §

bipolar disorder, and it showed that patients that have bipolar disorder have a greatly increased

00:50:02 ► §

relief of symptoms. In the study also, they looked at schizophrenia,

00:50:07 ► §

and they didn’t find the same relationship there.

00:50:10 ► §

So have many of you heard about the controversy about cannabis and schizophrenia?

00:50:17 ► §

Well, if you haven’t, you may,

00:50:19 ► §

because that seems to be the last bastion of where the attacks are coming from.

00:50:25 ► §

You know, with all this research about the medicinal benefits

00:50:28 ► §

and really almost any scientific paper that you write

00:50:31 ► §

isn’t going to say anything about the negative effects of cannabis,

00:50:37 ► §

it’s kind of like the last straw that the government’s going to throw at us

00:50:42 ► §

about being cautious about using or

00:50:45 ► §

keeping it illegal, actually.

00:50:47 ► §

In Great Britain, they down-regulated, they had changed the scheduling of cannabis to

00:50:53 ► §

be more liberal, and because of some research on schizophrenia a few years ago, they made

00:50:57 ► §

it actually more restrictive.

00:50:59 ► §

A lot of the people that really knew the cannabis literature resigned. The whole board that had been put together to reschedule cannabis to a more liberal component

00:51:14 ► §

actually all resigned because it was so politicized.

00:51:18 ► §

Did you have a question?

00:51:19 ► §

I just want to know if there was any studies done with autism.

00:51:23 ► §

Not that I’ve seen. Not that I’ve seen.

00:51:25 ► §

Not that I’ve seen.

00:51:26 ► §

Lots of anecdotal studies.

00:51:30 ► §

Right.

00:51:37 ► §

Yeah.

00:51:40 ► §

Yeah.

00:51:41 ► §

Yeah. She was saying this is the best thing for his optimism. He can actually interact a little bit now.

00:51:46 ► §

He’s not in conflict with himself.

00:51:51 ► §

Yeah.

00:51:52 ► §

That’s going to be a big, big thing.

00:51:53 ► §

I think that really will be.

00:51:56 ► §

I had the privilege of knowing a researcher named Claudia Jensen, an MD at USC,

00:52:02 ► §

and she used cannabis in her practice for children that had ADD,

00:52:07 ► §

and it was very controversial. She was actually called back to testify in Washington to the

00:52:13 ► §

health department or to the Senate Committee on Health or whatever. But there is a huge benefit for people with ADD because, you know, they’re so scattered and, you know, things are, stimulus is coming in.

00:52:32 ► §

And having the cannabis, it kind of down-regulates all of that input and makes it easier to concentrate.

00:52:40 ► §

This is a book called Jeffrey’s Journey.

00:52:51 ► §

This is a book called Jeffrey’s Journey, and it is about one woman’s story about her child who had incredible rages, and that can happen in autism, too.

00:53:00 ► §

It doesn’t really say the diagnosis, but I love that Andrew Weil actually gave his endorsement of this, saying, Jeffrey’s Journey is a compelling firsthand account of the successful use of medical marijuana

00:53:05 ► §

to treat a serious behavioral disorder in a child.

00:53:08 ► §

This engaging case report offers an honest look

00:53:12 ► §

at conventional psychiatric medications

00:53:14 ► §

and sheds new light on the untapped possibilities

00:53:18 ► §

of cannabis as an alternative.

00:53:20 ► §

Who’s the author?

00:53:23 ► §

Debbie Jeffries and Lorraine Jeffries.

00:53:27 ► §

So here’s this study that looked at bipolar, thought it had some benefit, and looked at

00:53:31 ► §

schizophrenia, didn’t think it had any benefit. But then in June, this study came out.

00:53:35 ► §

Oral THC improves symptoms of schizophrenia.

00:53:38 ► §

So it depends. When I get a negative report

00:53:43 ► §

on anything, I start looking for the rebuttal to that report,

00:53:48 ► §

which is usually on Normal’s website.

00:53:51 ► §

Paul Armentano.

00:53:52 ► §

Who funded it?

00:53:54 ► §

Exactly, who funded it.

00:53:55 ► §

That’s the very first question.

00:53:57 ► §

Who funded it?

00:53:58 ► §

It almost always has some kind of government money.

00:54:01 ► §

But this particular thing did show a big improvement

00:54:05 ► §

in the patients using cannabis

00:54:07 ► §

but I mentioned the recent study

00:54:12 ► §

this came out March 1st

00:54:15 ► §

this is the negative thing that you’ll see

00:54:18 ► §

this got a lot of press

00:54:20 ► §

it was all over the internet

00:54:21 ► §

it was reported in newspapers

00:54:24 ► §

pot smoking increases risks of psychosis so right off the bat It was all over the Internet. It was reported in newspapers.

00:54:27 ► §

Pot smoking increases risks of psychosis.

00:54:32 ► §

So right off the bat, next day, I go to Normal’s website,

00:54:37 ► §

and here is the rebuttal to it, which is beautiful.

00:54:42 ► §

And it quotes this article.

00:54:44 ► §

So this came out March 1st.

00:54:46 ► §

This was actually even ahead of that.

00:54:50 ► §

So this was in February, the middle of last month.

00:54:53 ► §

And so it was before this was even on the newsstand.

00:54:59 ► §

And this was published in the Journal of Addiction.

00:55:03 ► §

Supposed marijuana and schizophrenia link overstated. So it gives now a lot of references within this article

00:55:08 ► §

as to where you can look to just see where they’ve overstated this association.

00:55:15 ► §

That’s all it is.

00:55:17 ► §

It’s a possible association, especially they talk about kids

00:55:21 ► §

that start heavy cannabis use as teenagers.

00:55:24 ► §

They haven’t been able to find it in anyone else.

00:55:27 ► §

And if there is a statistical association,

00:55:30 ► §

they don’t know if the disease caused the use of cannabis or the cannabis caused the –

00:55:38 ► §

they like to think the cannabis caused it.

00:55:40 ► §

But it’s such a tiny, tiny fraction of patients that might even fall into this category

00:55:48 ► §

that it hasn’t reached any kind of significance.

00:55:53 ► §

Because, for instance, you see the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia and psychosis

00:55:59 ► §

were either stable or declining during the period that they’re looking at it,

00:56:03 ► §

and there hasn’t been any increase in schizophrenia in the general population.

00:56:08 ► §

In fact, there’s been a slight decline.

00:56:11 ► §

Yeah.

00:56:12 ► §

NPR just had an article out on the teenage brain, though,

00:56:17 ► §

and how, because it’s in the process of formation,

00:56:20 ► §

that there’s not a connection between the frontal lobe.

00:56:22 ► §

And they actually referenced that medical marijuana alters the connectors up there

00:56:29 ► §

for the teenage brain, just because it’s not formed in a way that it doesn’t to adult brains.

00:56:34 ► §

Yeah, I think it’s really very good to be cautious about any kind of drug therapy in children.

00:56:44 ► §

In fact, that goes for Ritalin and

00:56:45 ► §

all the other kinds of things that people are giving kids. But in some cases, like with this

00:56:53 ► §

child and cases of ADD, you have to look at the risk-benefit ratio and taking a risk where there may be a tiny risk in a teenage brain

00:57:09 ► §

and forming whatever is going to happen in the future.

00:57:12 ► §

But it may be an overwhelming reason to use cannabis

00:57:19 ► §

if they have a situation that could benefit from it.

00:57:22 ► §

have a situation that could benefit from it.

00:57:32 ► §

The safety of cannabis is also something that people have looked at,

00:57:37 ► §

and our government always tries to tell us that it’s so unsafe,

00:57:43 ► §

but this particular graph, which I know it’s probably a little hard to see from where you’re sitting,

00:57:50 ► §

but it was done by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, as well as UC San Francisco. So these are very reputable sources. And here’s cannabis over here. They’re looking at nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol,

00:57:56 ► §

caffeine, and cannabis. Cannabis is low on everything except for the intoxication. It’s not the same as nicotine or caffeine.

00:58:08 ► §

It doesn’t cause any kind of intoxication. But if you’re looking at intoxication

00:58:12 ► §

levels compared to heroin, cocaine, and alcohol,

00:58:15 ► §

it’s lower than any of those. So it’s safer

00:58:20 ► §

in all these different parameters of possible

00:58:23 ► §

what would be looked at as addictive potentials of any drug.

00:58:29 ► §

As Christine mentioned earlier,

00:58:32 ► §

there is no LD50 or lethal dose known for cannabis.

00:58:37 ► §

I’m a lactation consultant, and in my training,

00:58:40 ► §

I asked all kinds of studies done on alcohol and breast milk

00:58:44 ► §

and how it affects the kids, and I wanted to know if there was any studies for THC.

00:58:49 ► §

And she said there was one she didn’t want to talk about.

00:58:52 ► §

And so after class, I said, well, what’s up with this study?

00:58:56 ► §

And she goes, well, the babies whose mothers smoked were smarter.

00:59:03 ► §

They were smarter, and she said they ate better.

00:59:07 ► §

I don’t know what that was about.

00:59:09 ► §

I don’t know if it was healthy, or maybe it was just like growing.

00:59:12 ► §

Well, maybe with the sucking, nursing,

00:59:16 ► §

because that does seem to be enhanced with kids that are exposed to THC.

00:59:22 ► §

You know, fatter.

00:59:24 ► §

Yeah. So I thought that was You know, fatter. Yeah.

00:59:25 ► §

So I thought that was interesting.

00:59:26 ► §

They were smarter.

00:59:27 ► §

Yeah.

00:59:28 ► §

Well, Melanie Dreyer out of, I think it’s the University of Indiana or Ohio,

00:59:34 ► §

one of those Midwestern universities,

00:59:36 ► §

she did her Ph.D. thesis on cannabis smoking in pregnant women.

00:59:44 ► §

And she did it in Jamaica.

00:59:48 ► §

And she’s really a great expert.

00:59:51 ► §

And if you Googled her name,

00:59:54 ► §

you’d be able to listen to some of her lectures.

00:59:58 ► §

And this is all about use of cannabis in pregnant women

01:00:01 ► §

and babies later on.

01:00:04 ► §

Melanie Dreyer.

01:00:06 ► §

And I’ve heard her speak a few times, and she is just so great.

01:00:13 ► §

And really, all the kids, they’ve been following the kids in her studies for many years,

01:00:17 ► §

and they do very, very well.

01:00:20 ► §

They have no impairment at all, and they do better in most everything.

01:00:24 ► §

You know, from my understanding of the, I read some stuff online about it, and the children

01:00:30 ► §

that came up actually excelled and were healthier than the kids that were taking nothing. So

01:00:36 ► §

they, you know, that was pretty amazing. I was amazed.

01:00:40 ► §

Yeah, it’s really great. It’s sad because so many doctors won’t, you know,

01:00:46 ► §

they’ll even take babies away from people that have been smoking cannabis

01:00:49 ► §

because, of course, you can do a urine test and see.

01:00:52 ► §

And it’s just really sad that it’s come to that

01:00:55 ► §

because especially for hyperimidus gravitarum,

01:01:00 ► §

which is excessive vomiting during pregnancy,

01:01:05 ► §

it’s sometimes the only thing that will work.

01:01:08 ► §

And keep babies in utero and not have a lot of premature low birth weight babies.

01:01:16 ► §

Can we take about ten more minutes?

01:01:19 ► §

Yeah.

01:01:19 ► §

Oh, yeah.

01:01:20 ► §

Sorry, we’re good.

01:01:21 ► §

It’s okay.

01:01:21 ► §

Okay.

01:01:22 ► §

So I’ll skip through some of these things. Safety, you know, it, sorry, we’re good. It’s okay. Okay. So I’ll skip through some of these things.

01:01:26 ► §

Safety, you know, it’s just, you know, you don’t already feel like it’s pretty safe.

01:01:33 ► §

Well, hey.

01:01:35 ► §

But this one, I really loved this study from UCSD.

01:01:40 ► §

This was in August.

01:01:43 ► §

Looked at binge drinking in college kids.

01:01:45 ► §

This is done through UCSD and San Diego State.

01:01:48 ► §

And they had a definition for binge drinking, quite a few drinks in one period of time.

01:01:54 ► §

And they looked at the brain matter of kids that had the binge drinking.

01:01:59 ► §

In eight different brain cell regions, they had white cell damage.

01:02:04 ► §

In eight different brain cell regions, they had white cell damage.

01:02:08 ► §

But the kids that smoked cannabis and drank at the same time had protection in seven of the eight areas of the brain.

01:02:13 ► §

So that is a, you know, have a joint with your wine, you know?

01:02:19 ► §

Yeah.

01:02:19 ► §

Yeah?

01:02:22 ► §

I’ve just read recently about a fellow in Canada

01:02:27 ► §

by the name of Rick Simpson

01:02:28 ► §

do you have any information on him?

01:02:33 ► §

I don’t have any information here

01:02:35 ► §

but I think Alex can talk about Rick

01:02:37 ► §

I can tell you later if you want to

01:02:39 ► §

Rick Simpson is just making a highly concentrated

01:02:43 ► §

hand boil in Canada and he’s giving making a highly concentrated hemp oil in Canada

01:02:46 ► §

and he’s giving it out to thousands of people

01:02:49 ► §

and they’re all anecdotal trials

01:02:52 ► §

and a lot of people will cure from their cancer, their pain

01:02:55 ► §

this and that, high concentrated doses

01:02:57 ► §

actually I made some, I started making

01:03:00 ► §

I got a contingency together about a year ago, we started making some

01:03:04 ► §

and started giving it out to people with pretty hardcore stuff.

01:03:10 ► §

One gal with cancer, anecdotally it looks like we sustained her life about five months

01:03:17 ► §

and the quality cannot even be, you can’t even tell about her.

01:03:22 ► §

She was happy.

01:03:23 ► §

She wasn’t just dying anymore.

01:03:25 ► §

She could go outside, and her tumor even shrank.

01:03:30 ► §

And I was in touch with her doctor, primary care provider doctor, this whole time,

01:03:33 ► §

and her doctor was calling me up being like, what’s going on there?

01:03:37 ► §

So there’s –

01:03:38 ► §

Yeah, I’d like to talk to you more about that.

01:03:40 ► §

Yeah, well, yeah, and we want to do more trials.

01:03:42 ► §

There’s other new things come out recently, the new CO2 extraction.

01:03:47 ► §

I don’t think I’ve told almost anybody about that here.

01:03:49 ► §

Wow.

01:03:49 ► §

That’s the latest, greatest thing.

01:03:52 ► §

So it’s just a more pure form of like Rick Simpson, basically.

01:03:58 ► §

I’m just about ready to wrap up here.

01:04:00 ► §

I just wanted to show you a few things.

01:04:02 ► §

I have a whole library on cannabis medicine, but this is a fabulous book.

01:04:07 ► §

Ethan Russo was the doctor I heard at the NORML conference.

01:04:11 ► §

The other MD that was a co-author on this is from

01:04:15 ► §

the Netherlands. If you want to get scientific on how it works,

01:04:20 ► §

this goes through the pharmacology of it. It’s a really beautiful

01:04:23 ► §

reference for people that really need to be technical, as well as this book. It’s the pharmacology of it, and it’s a really beautiful reference for people that really need to be technical.

01:04:26 ► §

As well as this book, it’s the same kind of thing.

01:04:29 ► §

Really technical stuff for chemists and scientists and MDs that want to know the science behind it.

01:04:36 ► §

This is a read that I just couldn’t put it down, Understanding Marijuana.

01:04:40 ► §

And Mitch Earlywine used to teach at USC.

01:04:44 ► §

He’s an exceptional speaker if you ever get

01:04:46 ► §

a chance to listen to him. But this book is just so easy to read and it’s fascinating and all the

01:04:51 ► §

studies are annotated to and it goes through different ways of using it. What’s his last name?

01:04:57 ► §

Russo. R-U-S-S-O. Mitch Russo. Oh, I’m sorry. Mitch Earlywine. Earlywine. Earlywine. And the other doctor is Ethan Russo.

01:05:07 ► §

Are those linked on your website?

01:05:09 ► §

These books I didn’t put on there.

01:05:11 ► §

I didn’t, but you could write them down before you leave.

01:05:14 ► §

I started, after that normal conference,

01:05:17 ► §

I started putting together a whole bunch of,

01:05:19 ► §

this is just a tiny sampling of studies

01:05:24 ► §

that were done earlier than the last few years.

01:05:29 ► §

And so all I’ve really concentrated on were a few little sensational things.

01:05:33 ► §

But if you start really delving into it, you will be amazed at this absolutely,

01:05:38 ► §

I think of this medicine as a tonic and something that all, especially aging people, should go for.

01:05:44 ► §

It’s really, the way that it works is so similar to very expensive drugs that,

01:05:49 ► §

you know, especially for arthritis and inflammation, that sort of thing.

01:05:53 ► §

I’m going to just show you really quickly, if you want to see, yeah,

01:06:02 ► §

the practical aspects of administration.

01:06:07 ► §

Probably a lot of you already know these kinds of things,

01:06:09 ► §

but we have four different delivery devices.

01:06:13 ► §

Of course, you’ve got the pipe.

01:06:15 ► §

Rolling papers, but we never use them.

01:06:22 ► §

Mendo mulcher is really the best.

01:06:28 ► §

It’s called a mendo mulcher mulcher

01:06:29 ► §

you do this

01:06:32 ► §

after you’ve used it quite a long time

01:06:37 ► §

your little

01:06:39 ► §

keef gets down here and you can use that

01:06:43 ► §

separately

01:06:43 ► §

in the meantime you take the top part off,

01:06:48 ► §

and your ground bud is in there for your pipe.

01:06:52 ► §

So what I’m showing you here is some vaporizer choices.

01:06:56 ► §

There’s lots of vaporizer choices out there,

01:06:58 ► §

and most of them don’t work very well.

01:07:02 ► §

And I’ll get to the volcano in a second. This is an Iolite. It’s very good, very well. And I’ll get to the volcano in a second.

01:07:06 ► §

This is an Iolite.

01:07:07 ► §

It’s very good, very portable.

01:07:10 ► §

You can get this online.

01:07:12 ► §

And it takes a butane charge.

01:07:15 ► §

You just charge it up.

01:07:17 ► §

And it’s a little igniter there.

01:07:19 ► §

And the technology is similar to what they use in a hot glue gun.

01:07:22 ► §

So it doesn’t get too hot.

01:07:23 ► §

Because vaporization needs to be just the right temperature,

01:07:27 ► §

250, 300, to cause the cannabinoids to vaporize

01:07:32 ► §

without any products of combustion.

01:07:35 ► §

Do you know, is there a lot of the cannabinoids?

01:07:41 ► §

Cannabinoids, yeah.

01:07:42 ► §

Yeah, cannabinoids.

01:07:43 ► §

Do they vaporize, all of them vaporize all of them?

01:07:46 ► §

They probably get 50% off the leaves.

01:07:50 ► §

And what’s left over you could use in cooking because there’s still some in there.

01:07:55 ► §

But the nice thing is it doesn’t smell a lot.

01:07:58 ► §

And this works really good.

01:08:00 ► §

It tastes really good, actually.

01:08:02 ► §

How do you smell it?

01:08:02 ► §

What did you say it was?

01:08:03 ► §

It’s an Iolite, I-O-L-I-T-E.

01:08:08 ► §

And this is made in Britain.

01:08:10 ► §

You can get it from Vape Fiend.

01:08:12 ► §

And the reason we brought these

01:08:13 ► §

in is because, well, this is

01:08:15 ► §

a very cheap method.

01:08:18 ► §

This is the next, this is a

01:08:19 ► §

vaporizer, and Ron can talk about that.

01:08:21 ► §

That’s the next, that’s about $70,

01:08:23 ► §

something like that. This is around $250.

01:08:26 ► §

That’s around $400.

01:08:28 ► §

$400.

01:08:28 ► §

$400.

01:08:28 ► §

$400.

01:08:29 ► §

$400.

01:08:29 ► §

$400.

01:08:29 ► §

$400.

01:08:29 ► §

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01:08:32 ► §

$400.$400. $400.$400. $400.$400. $400.$400. $400.$400. $400 breaker breaker, give me your 20, because nobody would really know what you’re doing.

01:08:48 ► §

This has a little ceramic plate in it.

01:08:51 ► §

You put your cannabis,

01:08:52 ► §

ground up cannabis in here,

01:08:54 ► §

and you use a lighter to put hot air in this ceramic plate.

01:08:59 ► §

That way you’re not actually burning the cannabis.

01:09:02 ► §

So you have things like that.

01:09:05 ► §

The thing that we like about the Volcano

01:09:11 ► §

is its high-tech German technology.

01:09:14 ► §

You put ground-up cannabis in this little canister.

01:09:18 ► §

You put it right on the top,

01:09:20 ► §

and it’s set to a certain temperature.

01:09:22 ► §

You turn the air pump on,

01:09:24 ► §

and it starts to blow,

01:09:27 ► §

and you can see the vapor coming out.

01:09:29 ► §

That’s not smoke.

01:09:31 ► §

That’s not smoke.

01:09:32 ► §

It’s vapor.

01:09:34 ► §

And you probably won’t be able to even smell it.

01:09:37 ► §

If you come right over here, you go, hmm, a little bit,

01:09:39 ► §

but it doesn’t smell up your whole house.

01:09:42 ► §

So you fill up the bag, which is just a baking bag is all it is, like a turkey bag or something.

01:09:51 ► §

And you just take it off, turn it off, put this little thing snaps on there, and when

01:10:01 ► §

you push on it you can see it coming out.

01:10:03 ► §

Wow. there and when you push on you can see it coming out but you don’t have to be in a hurry you can

01:10:10 ► §

sit down it’ll last for five or ten minutes no no sensation really but it definitely works

01:10:17 ► §

are you participating right now yeah he is i have my, though. I think you ought to share it around.

01:10:32 ► §

Well, actually, I’m just a little anecdotal, and I know we’ve got to go.

01:10:36 ► §

But I have actually seen these used in communal situations,

01:10:40 ► §

because you can make the bag as large and small as you want.

01:10:46 ► §

I’ve seen a six-foot bag with a helium balloon on the end of it so that it, you know,

01:10:47 ► §

otherwise it would just be like this.

01:10:49 ► §

So it’s floating up there and you can just pass

01:10:52 ► §

it around

01:10:53 ► §

a large

01:10:55 ► §

bag, but a small bag.

01:10:57 ► §

And you could even take this off

01:10:59 ► §

and change the mouthpiece if you really

01:11:01 ► §

had a need to do that, you know.

01:11:04 ► §

Do you find that having it that way helps you sleep,

01:11:07 ► §

just as it is if you smoke it?

01:11:09 ► §

It works the same way.

01:11:11 ► §

Yeah, just the same.

01:11:13 ► §

I always feel like it’s different.

01:11:15 ► §

You know, I’ve heard people say,

01:11:17 ► §

oh, that doesn’t get any higher.

01:11:19 ► §

So, okay, try it a second time, they’ll go, whoa.

01:11:23 ► §

So it’s just… I’ve also heard, depending on how hot it is second time and they’ll go, whoa. So it’s just…

01:11:25 ► §

I’ve also heard, depending on how hot it is, because I have a digital one,

01:11:29 ► §

and there’s some research out there on how you should set the temperature

01:11:33 ► §

for either the sativa or the indica.

01:11:35 ► §

There’s different temperatures and also different temperatures

01:11:37 ► §

to release different levels of the cannabinoids.

01:11:41 ► §

I haven’t heard that.

01:11:42 ► §

I have the numbers written down somewhere.

01:11:44 ► §

I mean, I use them at home. It’s like they say between

01:11:47 ► §

364 and 374. Interesting.

01:11:53 ► §

We really need more research on that kind of thing

01:11:56 ► §

because I haven’t seen any of that, but that’s fascinating.

01:11:59 ► §

The UCSD study that you talked about, which was the $8 million

01:12:03 ► §

that California put up to have UCSD study the medicinal effects,

01:12:07 ► §

they were using the NIDA-supplied cigarettes from Mississippi for many of their studies,

01:12:15 ► §

but they did take a volcano and they would use smoke from joints that were government supplied and compared

01:12:27 ► §

it with the vapor from the volcano and found out all the THC was there, all the other cannabinoid

01:12:37 ► §

profile, the ones that were able to be volatilized at that temperature, like 350. But there were no products of combustion in there.

01:12:46 ► §

There was no carbon monoxide.

01:12:48 ► §

There was no various forms of carbon

01:12:52 ► §

that would be in the process of burning.

01:12:56 ► §

You just don’t find…

01:12:57 ► §

And what you often hear is people say,

01:12:59 ► §

oh, you can’t smoke anything.

01:13:01 ► §

It’s bad for you.

01:13:02 ► §

It’s going to cause lung cancer.

01:13:03 ► §

Look at all the toxic agents in the smoke.

01:13:06 ► §

But we already found that there’s an anti-cancer effect to cannabis

01:13:10 ► §

that might be contra, working against the possibilities

01:13:15 ► §

that some of the nasty ingredients that are in smoke,

01:13:20 ► §

that may be the explanation for that.

01:13:22 ► §

But if you’re concerned about that at all, go with a vaporizer.

01:13:25 ► §

That’s my point.

01:13:27 ► §

Do you have any information about chronic vaporization and damage to the cilia in the lungs?

01:13:33 ► §

Because you’re not getting the smoke, you’re not getting the exacerbation of the lung tissue,

01:13:39 ► §

actually moving the toxins along.

01:13:43 ► §

No, I think that study in New Zealand kind of would put that to rest.

01:13:47 ► §

You know, even patients that smoked marijuana had better vital capacity and lung volume, all that.

01:13:53 ► §

No, they vaporized rather than smoking.

01:13:56 ► §

Oh.

01:13:57 ► §

No, it’s got everything that’s in the smoke except all the nasty stuff.

01:14:00 ► §

Yeah.

01:14:00 ► §

Right, yeah, I’ve seen some information about that.

01:14:02 ► §

Yeah.

01:14:03 ► §

Interesting.

01:14:04 ► §

I’d be interested in seeing that, yeah.

01:14:06 ► §

Yeah.

01:14:06 ► §

I can tell you I cough a lot less using that than I ever did when I smoked.

01:14:10 ► §

Yeah.

01:14:13 ► §

Well, the research is saying that coughing is actually helpful for the lungs.

01:14:19 ► §

Yeah.

01:14:19 ► §

Well, it does have an expectorant value to it that you still can call.

01:14:28 ► §

Yeah.

01:14:28 ► §

Which I do on occasion, which is not so much.

01:14:33 ► §

So one last thing.

01:14:35 ► §

Join the groups.

01:14:37 ► §

And maybe if you can’t afford to give any money, it doesn’t matter,

01:14:41 ► §

but just go look at them, like Drug Policy Alliance, Medical Marijuana

01:14:45 ► §

Project, LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, NORML, Americans for Safe Access,

01:14:56 ► §

and they’re on the links that I’ll send you. And if you just go to their website, and every week or

01:15:01 ► §

so they’ll have a new action alert, just click it and send something off to our people in Congress.

01:15:08 ► §

And join them if you can.

01:15:10 ► §

If you can afford $3 a month every month, support them with your money too

01:15:16 ► §

because these people are just pouring it on for us back in Washington,

01:15:20 ► §

and that’s how we’ve gotten where we’ve gotten.

01:15:23 ► §

That’s it.

01:15:23 ► §

Thank you very much.

01:15:24 ► §

Yeah.

01:15:32 ► §

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:15:35 ► §

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:15:45 ► §

So, do you now feel a little better prepared to debate the issues of cannabis prohibition?

01:15:50 ► §

I’ll post those links to Claudia’s with the program notes for this podcast,

01:15:53 ► §

which you know you can find through psychedelicsalon.org.

01:15:58 ► §

And I strongly encourage you to visit some of the websites that she lists there.

01:16:04 ► §

Also, there is one issue that Claudia had the courage to raise that I’d like to comment on myself and it’s something

01:16:06 ► §

that most of the cannabis advocacy

01:16:08 ► §

groups seem to ignore

01:16:09 ► §

yet for me it’s one of the most

01:16:12 ► §

important features of cannabis

01:16:13 ► §

and that is its ability to

01:16:16 ► §

elevate one’s mood to help fight

01:16:18 ► §

off depression

01:16:18 ► §

now in the Christian culture we find

01:16:22 ► §

ourselves in here in the states these days

01:16:24 ► §

it isn’t proper to admit that mood improvement or feeling good is okay.

01:16:29 ► §

Unless, of course, it’s done through the use of a prescription pharmaceutical

01:16:33 ► §

like Prozac or Valium or Xanax or something like that.

01:16:37 ► §

You know, I can remember way back in my past life as a corporate suit

01:16:42 ► §

that some of my business associates were adamantly against cannabis

01:16:46 ► §

because they thought that it made people feel better

01:16:49 ► §

than what these jerks thought that we should be feeling.

01:16:53 ► §

And the kicker is that these same guys, for the most part,

01:16:56 ► §

were on some kind of a prescription tranquilizer of their own.

01:17:00 ► §

And by the way, some of those are really powerful.

01:17:03 ► §

In fact, if you live somewhere where there isn’t a regular supply of top quality cannabis

01:17:08 ► §

you may find as I did that Xanax is an excellent substitute

01:17:13 ► §

but if you do be very careful

01:17:16 ► §

because unlike cannabis it’s quite easy to develop an addiction for it

01:17:22 ► §

anyway here are these guys I was working with who were putting down on people they

01:17:27 ► §

called potheads, mainly because they thought they were feeling too good.

01:17:31 ► §

And yet these same guys were as mentally disoriented from their prescription medicines as any first

01:17:37 ► §

time toker would be.

01:17:39 ► §

Ultimately, the only arguments I can see against the use of cannabis are all religious based.

01:17:44 ► §

You know, those sad sacks are going to jobs they hate,

01:17:47 ► §

living in a society that’s ever changing all around them, and then they blindly

01:17:52 ► §

follow the urgings of these nutty preachers who are doing everything they can

01:17:56 ► §

to ensure that no one else is having a better time than they are.

01:18:00 ► §

Okay, I’ll get off my high horse now, but

01:18:03 ► §

my guess is that I’m only saying things that you’ve been thinking about yourself.

01:18:08 ► §

So I’ll get out of the way now, and you can take this program and pass it around to your friends, relatives, and neighbors if you have the courage.

01:18:16 ► §

Play it in your drug education class if you have a teacher who’s courageous and will let you do it.

01:18:21 ► §

Listen to it with your friends and memorize some of these important facts about cannabis.

01:18:27 ► §

And then you no longer have to bite your tongue

01:18:28 ► §

when somebody tries to spread more lies

01:18:31 ► §

about this wonderful plant.

01:18:33 ► §

It’s time to stand up and be counted, my friend.

01:18:36 ► §

Don’t let them push you around with bad information anymore.

01:18:39 ► §

After all, we’re all in this together, you know.

01:18:44 ► §

And speaking of being in this together,

01:18:47 ► §

you may also want to listen to the latest podcast from thedopefiend.co.uk.

01:18:52 ► §

It’s number 211, I believe, and in it, the Dope Fiend and some of his audience

01:18:57 ► §

exchange ideas about some of the concepts and topics that were covered just now.

01:19:03 ► §

And so it’s an excellent place to continue this conversation.

01:19:07 ► §

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a plug to my friend KMO and his Sea Realm podcast.

01:19:13 ► §

His recent programs, numbers 194 and 195,

01:19:17 ► §

in which he interviews Albert Bates, are not to be missed, in my opinion.

01:19:22 ► §

There’s a lot of important thinking coming out of the Dope Fiend podcast

01:19:25 ► §

and the Sea Realm podcast,

01:19:27 ► §

and I highly recommend them all in the event that you haven’t already listened to them yourselves.

01:19:33 ► §

And like this podcast, their subscriptions are all free.

01:19:38 ► §

Well, that’s going to have to do it for now,

01:19:40 ► §

and so I’ll close today’s podcast again by reminding you that this Thank you. Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon web page, which you can find through psychedelicsalon.org.

01:20:07 ► §

And if you’re interested in the philosophy behind the Psychedelic Salon,

01:20:12 ► §

well, you can hear all about it in my novel, The Genesis Generation,

01:20:16 ► §

which is available as an audiobook that you can download at genesisgeneration.us.

01:20:22 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from

01:20:26 ► §

Cyberdelic Space.

01:20:27 ► §

Be well, my friends.